Pixelation
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: buddy90 on July 12, 2010, 07:14:20 am
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I want to talk about color today, and what I think I learned from playing with pixels in my short time. Mainly, I'm referring to hue, saturation, and value. It seems that visual art in any form is about how things react to light, which makes sense since anything visible is due to light. And in pixel art, it's your job as an artist to try to depict a three dimensional form in two-dimensions, and in a grid.
From what I understand, warm colors (red, orange, yellow) are where the light hits strongest, and cool colors (violet, blue, green) are where the shadows are. It works as a wheel.
(http://projects.cbe.ab.ca/AlexFerg/showcase07-08/rehakclassblog1/Pictures/ColorWheel1.jpg)
Opposite colors can be formed here. Main ones are Orange-Blue, Red-Green, and yellow-violet. Meaning, those two color-pairs are the furthest distance from each other. Makes sense why traffic lights are red and green. A good piece should distinguish between elements in a composition, and one way to do that is to use colors. Warm colors would pop out more amongst cool colors than among other warm colors. Simple example.
(http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/9616/example1u.png)
But, the wheel doesn't talk about earth colors (brown) or black and white or grey. Also, I believe the warmest color is yellow, and the coolest is blue. Maybe the warmest color is orange though...I'm not sure.
On saturation, it appears that the more saturation you add, the more "color" you add, and when you remove it, you remove color. Hence, it'll look grayer. I'm not too sure about this, but I believe a saturated color appears when it's closer to light, and becomes unsaturated when it becomes a shadow. Like with warm/cool colors, saturated colors pop more amongst unsaturated colors, and vice versa.
(http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/6198/example2f.png)
And finally, value. Value is, I think, the most important characteristic of a color. It defines depth more than the other two characteristics, and for this, it's good to start a piece using only value. Darker colors imply shadows, and whiter colors imply closer proximity to light. A light color pops out more against a dark color, and vice versa.
(http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/8236/example3i.png)
An interesting I've noticed, when value is 0 or 100, adding hue or saturation will not change the colors in any way.
So, am I correct? What else do you guys know about color?
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Umm..there's this image which tries to explain the "feelings" certain colors cause.
(http://images.nukedstudios.com/uploads/colors_explained1340.gif)
Might help with color studies and color selection. Don't know where I got that from initially though.
Edit: Oh, and one more thing. The color wheel you've posted is a bit strange. I would consider your "Red" a "Dark Red", and your "Red-Orange" a "Red". Also, Cyan is an important element which is missing in there.
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Cooincidence, I was just thinking about colors before I got home. I think there should be an algorithm to convert between colorspace of paint (primary colors, white & black) and RGB. Unlike RGB where you use numbers ranging anywhere from 0-255, the RYB+B&W color space would work with percentages that add up to %100.
0,0,0 = 100% black
255,0,0 = 100% red
255,255,0 = 100% yellow
0,255,0 = 50% yellow, 50% blue
0,255,255 = 50% blue, 50% white
0,0,255 = 100% blue
255,0,255 = 50% red, 50% white
255,255,255 = 100% white
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Dragonboy: You might be interested in the Kubelka-Monk equations; in short, converting from paint -> RGB is considerably easier a task than vice versa.
And finally, value. Value is, I think, the most important characteristic of a color. It defines depth more than the other two characteristics, and for this, it's good to start a piece using only value. Darker colors imply shadows, and whiter colors imply closer proximity to light. A light color pops out more against a dark color, and vice versa.
An interesting I've noticed, when value is 0 or 100, adding hue or saturation will not change the colors in any way.
What do you mean here? In an artistic sense, value = 0 is always black and value=100 is always white. Not in terms of HSV, though -- if your paint program behaves this way, it may be repackaging a slightly different colorspace like HSL/HLS as HSV, because the L channel of HSL does have that property.
The color produced by maximum value in HSV is completely dependent on hue and saturation -- all that value=100 implies is that one or more of the color components will be set to maximum (255)
If you are looking for reliable comparisons of colors then you may want to look into LCH colorspace ( which is like HSL or HSV but a much closer approximation of the eye's color perception)